My first hand-to-hand with Rian. I didn’t know his name yet or that he was Kathan’s third in command, just that I wanted to hack him to pieces and buy Tough, Ryder, and Sissy as much time as possible.
The security detail leader—Rian—growled and snatched the knife away. He planted it in the meat just above my knee, less than an inch from the bullet hole scar. I yelled. My leg jerked involuntarily, shredding even more muscle around the blade and hook. For a second I thought I was going to black out.
The rest of the foot soldiers crowded around us, covering me with their rifles while Rian ratcheted hot metal handcuffs shut around my wrists.
Then I heard the boom of the beanbag gun. That meant that in the confusion, Ryder had surprised Mikal from behind with his barbed-wire garrote and Tough had made it close enough to Kathan to fire off that homemade round of lye into the fucker’s face, hopefully blinding him.
Another boom. I hoped Ryder had thought fast enough to duck down behind Mikal’s wings—Tough’s second round of lye was supposed to be for her.
“I’ve got him!” Rian snapped at the other foot soldiers. “Get out there!”
Combat boots shook the rotten floor beneath me as the soldiers sprinted to the windows. I prayed to God that Sissy would be fast enough.
Rian hauled me to my feet and shoved his sidearm into my ribs, but I wasn’t resisting anymore. All my focus was on trying to hear what was happening out on the street. I’d heard Sissy banish demons before and it damn sure hadn’t been this quiet. Even half-deaf I would be able to hear Hell opening up and dragging Kathan kicking and screaming into eternity.
But Hell never came for Kathan.
There was a screech shot through with unnatural bass notes. Then Ryder’s Saiga opened up, fully automatic. Then a whoomp like a brush pile soaked with diesel catching fire. Sissy screamed. Tough yelled something I couldn’t make out.
Back when I was alive, there was a jump in this memory. During my nightmares and sometimes when I couldn’t block it out, I would experience the jump as Rian hauling me across piles of moldy books and papers and rat crap, feeling the tearing pain in my leg, a million times worse every time I took a step…then sitting on a bench in Halo’s old jail house’s only cell between Ryder and Tough, staring at the cracked concrete floor, feeling nothing. Even with all the tearing around Mikal did in my head, she had never been able to find those missing hours. Cutting them out of my memory like they’d never happened was probably the one good thing my brain had ever done for me.
Now that I was dead, though, I remembered all of it. Every second of being perp-walked down the rickety stairs. Feeling the pain, smelling the smoke and burning meat, listening to Ryder empty his drum magazine.
The whole time, every single step, Sissy’s screaming went on and on. It was like she didn’t need to breathe. The sound just kept going, drilling down into my brain, triggering some pool of animal rage and pain, until all I could think was, if it was so bad, why didn’t Ryder just shoot her and put her out of her misery?
I should’ve fought Rian—bad leg or not, I should’ve tried to fight him. But I couldn’t. Something inside me was already broken. The smell, the sound of Sissy screaming, and the complete lack of evidence that Kathan had begun his descent into Hell… This plan was supposed to have worked. God had practically written it on the cabin wall. But we had failed. Again. In that minute, I didn’t have any reserves left. All the fight in me was gone.
Down every single step, across thirty feet of rotten flooring littered with more brittle brown newspaper, out the busted door. Sissy’s screaming hit a higher pitch. I couldn’t believe anyone could make a noise like that. Throughout the entire war—four years of fighting—I’d never heard someone scream that way.
Rian dropped me in the street. The handle of the knife in my leg scraped against the blacktop. For a second, all I could see was red. Then the worn and duct-taped toes of Tough’s sneakers kicking at the asphalt next to a pair of shiny black combat boots faded into my field of vision.
I craned my neck as far as I could manage, trying to look up. A foot soldier was holding Tough’s scrawny arms up so that Tough’s feet barely touched the ground. Tears were streaming down my little brother’s face. Between bouts of incoherent sobbing, Tough screamed at the angel.
Ryder’s Saiga went quiet, and then he was cuffed and laying on the ground to my right. I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look my way. I managed to roll onto my side, away from the pain shooting up my thigh, and sit up so I could see what Ryder and Tough were staring at.
Directly ahead of us, a foot soldier kneeled on Kathan’s back, trying to jerk Sissy’s gravity knife out from between the mayor’s cervical vertebrae. Kathan wasn’t moving. Severing his spine had paralyzed him just like Sissy and I had hoped it would.
Off to the side, Mikal stood holding a gas can. The flesh around her eyes had bubbled and burned away in places from the lye, but she was grinning. In front of her, chained to a telephone pole, was a body engulfed in flames. Somehow the body was still screaming.
Sissy. Sissy was still screaming. The sound had become hoarse and croaking, but she was still going. She was still alive.
Mikal turned to face us.
